It's nice to be home again and able to post at leisure. My e-mail access was pretty spotty through the trip -- long-distance calls at Alex's and my folks' and Todd and Debby's (I could've just used their computers, but I usually need mine to get anything done, due to cross-referencing between files), and nothing at the convention. Oh, I *could've* dialed-in there, but it would've been expensive, and I was pretty frantic anyway. In a good way, but still.
The trip overall was worth doing, I think. Alex's house is going to be a great space to do the workshop -- it's still barely half-furnished, which makes it feel very open and accommodating. :-) The hot tub won't be installed in time, sadly, but there's a beach just a ten minute drive away. I might let 'em get away long enough to go to it... One of the big tasks for the next few weeks is planning this workshop. Specifically, I want to have pretty focused craft discussions in the mornings, which means assigning some reading, so that we're all on the same page. Which means I need to do some prep -- basically the equivalent of lesson plans, ideally by July 24th or so, so they have plenty of time to read it in advance. Interesting.
Had a mellow time at my parents' house, for the most part. Rested. Which was good, 'cause ReaderCon was go go go. Not too bad -- not as bad as this year's WisCon, where I'd definitely overbooked. But still -- I need to be careful about this stuff. One panel I moderated went really well, the one on race and sf/f. It would have been nice to go for another hour, so we could get deeper into the meaty stuff, but oh well. The other was fine, on the last year in short fiction, though I would have been more interested in a discussion of the various magazines, rather than the individual authors and stories. I should've probably had a heavier hand on the moderator reins; maybe next time. Some people are hard to rein in. Both the Broad Universe rapid-fire reading and the SH tea party went great -- I'm just sorry they were one right after another, and at the end of the con, when many people had already left. Still, we had great turnout for both of them -- the BU room was packed (and Octavia Butler came! Eep!), and the SH party spilled happily out into the hallway (in part 'cause that's where they set up our tea, not sure why. I walk away for two minutes...)
Overall, ReaderCon was a lot of fun, and it was nice seeing a fresh set of faces. I got to meet several of my authors -- from Wet, and SH, and the NJ workshop. So all that's great. It was too short for a con, I think -- basically two days. I'd have paid a little more for a more relaxed three day convention. And I think the panel discussion is actually more developed and challenging at WisCon; I guess that's what happens when you have mostly the same group of people discussing topics for umpteen years... I'm glad I went, but probably wouldn't go again except for the fact that it's near my folks, so I can easily fold it into a trip to visit them. Given that, I may well go again, and if you're a genre writer living in the New England area, I think it's worth your time. High proportion of pros to fans.
Lots of work to do in the next couple of weeks. I have my galleys of the Due article to proof today, and an art gallery to put together for SH. Lee tells me that she's mailing me the galleys for Herotica (!), so I'll be proofing those soon. Bills to pay, more e-mail to answer, etc. and so on. Reading Greg Egan's Schild's Ladder right now, in between all this. Hugging Kevin. Okay, that's not work, but time must be saved for it, so it goes on the list. :-)
Until later...